The girl in the top 1% of people with super recognition ability in the world

When she became an adult, Yenny Seo learned that she was in the group of 1% of people possessing superhuman facial recognition abilities in the world.

From a young age, Yenny Seo often surprised her mother by recognizing the strange customers shopping in the store who had passed by them a few weeks ago.

Similarly, when watching the film, she will point out the backing actors who have appeared briefly in other films, according to The Guardian.

Yenny (now 29) said her mother never thought her daughter's ability to identify was 'something special'. She simply assumed she had an observant child.

Yenny also doesn't know that her abilities are rare. She thought everyone was playing the same 'secret' game she did: spot a strange face on the street and rummage through her memory to see where she'd seen them before.

Yenny Seo never thought her ability special.

'This little game has always made me very happy, especially as a child. I remember I enjoyed seeing different faces,' she said.

Super Intuition

It wasn't until she grew up and started using social media that Yenny became self-aware of her abilities.

'For example, when I first entered school, or I met people for the first time through gatherings, I would recall seeing them in any pictures on the Internet. In my head, I knew who they were, siblings or lovers,' she said.

'However, I am also aware that the other party will be terrified if I tell them about this possibility. Therefore, I keep it a secret and just say a casual greeting,' added Yenny.

Once, when she was a part-time employee at a fashion store, Yenny had a reason to show off her special abilities.

She and her colleagues were shown a CCTV footage of a frequent shoplifter. Although the video quality was not clear, Yenny was still able to recognize the thief the next time he appeared and immediately alerted the security staff.

'But I still don't think my ability is special, because I have done it many times,' she shared.

Yenny ranked in the top 50 out of 100,000 who took the super-identity test.

Before the 2000s, scientists had not paid much attention to whether people had the same facial recognition ability.

'I think intuitive people believe that the way they see the world is similar to other people. And even scientists have this mindset," said Dr David White, now principal investigator at the Laboratory for Facial Research at the University of New South Wales (UNSW).

Mr. White first became interested in the field while researching a rare condition called prosopagnosia. The disease appears in people with brain injuries and makes them unable to recognize the faces of others, including loved ones. However, they can still recognize other objects.

'This is evidence that the human brain is organized to perform different tasks, similar to applications on smartphones,' he said.

Remarkable ability

Along with other researchers, Dr White began studying people without brain damage and found there was 'big variation' in each person's ability to recognize faces.

Research results show that only 1-2% of the population are 'people with superhuman recognition abilities'. They can remember unfamiliar faces, even at a glance.

At present, the reason for this possibility has not been clarified because this is a completely new field. There are only about 20 studies on it in the world. However, some scientists think that genetics play a role.

In 2017, Dr. White and colleagues at UNSW designed a publicly available online screening tool to search for people with this special ability globally. Yenny, then about 25 years old, scored so well that Dr. White invited her to Sydney (Australia) for further tests.

To date, more than 100,000 people have been tested, but Yenny still ranks in the top 50 with the highest scores.

Yenny did not think of joining the security and intelligence agency despite possessing special abilities.

Over the past decade, security and law enforcement agencies around the world have begun to recruit people with outstanding abilities like Yenny.

Police in London (UK) have a special team that specializes in checking security cameras at crime scenes. A few years ago, Queensland (Australia) police began identifying people with super-identifiers in their ranks.

A large number of private security companies specializing in providing the services of people with superhuman identification abilities also appeared.

For her part, Yenny is not as interested in arresting criminals as when she was a part-time employee. Currently, she is happy with her job as a technician at the anatomy laboratory.

She still likes to observe the faces around. Even the fact that everyone had to wear masks during the pandemic made her childhood identification game more challenging and attractive.

Yenny still recognized the right people in most cases, giving her 'more confidence in her abilities'.

'It made me realize that I'm not crazy or scary. It's just my brain that works that way,' she said.